Dal Kularhttp://dalkular.com
Words & Soul from the FrontlineThu, 09 Feb 2017 21:07:14 +0000en-UShourly199341981I am more powerful – a collaborative poemhttp://dalkular.com/more-powerful/
http://dalkular.com/more-powerful/#respondThu, 09 Feb 2017 12:40:20 +0000http://dalkular.com/?p=5850 I am more powerful than I know. I am more powerful than those around me give me credit for, and as soon as I can trust in that power, can believe in myself, they will hear me roar! I am more powerful than my self doubt. I’m also more powerful than my creative block. […]

I am more powerful than those around me give me credit for, and as soon as I can trust in that power, can believe in myself, they will hear me roar!

I am more powerful than my self doubt. I’m also more powerful than my creative block.

I am more powerful than my fears. I am more powerful than I can currently imagine.

I am more powerful than the stigma of weakness attributed to my gender for centuries by men who could never handle the ferocity of a lioness.

I am more powerful than HIStory will record or have you believe.

I am more powerful than slow disappointments.

I am more powerful than I ever thought possible.

I am more powerful than hate. I am more powerful that anger. I am more powerful than fear.

I am more powerful that their alternative facts, the threat of rivers of blood, than extremists afraid of a woman with a book.

I am more powerful than my pain. I am more powerful with my grief. I am powerful.

I am more powerful than my current story of myself. I am more powerful than I may ever imagine.

I am more powerful than all the heartache visited upon me by people less powerful than myself.

I am more powerful than the pain from my past.

I am more powerful than the lies they spoke over me.

I am more powerful when I am fully present in the moment and anchored in love, than when I run my mouth in reaction.

I am more powerful when I don’t believe those smallish thoughts that race my mind.

I am more powerful than my most powerful resistance.

I am more powerful than the stories of my past for I am made of the earth and stars.

I am more powerful than I look.

*

A huge * thank you * to all the wonderful lionesses who contributed their words to this collaborative poem-making project. THEY made THIS happen! If you want to be part of this collaborative force lets share the love on the blog roll below…

]]>http://dalkular.com/more-powerful/feed/05850The Sari Squad, Stri Shakti and Enlarging Capacities.http://dalkular.com/the-sari-squad-stri-shakti-and-enlarging-capacities/
http://dalkular.com/the-sari-squad-stri-shakti-and-enlarging-capacities/#respondFri, 20 Jan 2017 18:10:30 +0000http://dalkular.com/?p=5827“I do not allow myself to be overcome by hopelessness, no matter how tough the situation. I believe that if you just do your little bit without thinking of the bigness of what you stand against, if you turn to the enlargement of your own capacities, just that itself creates new potential.” Vandana Shiva. On the […]

“I do not allow myself to be overcome by hopelessness, no matter how tough the situation. I believe that if you just do your little bit without thinking of the bigness of what you stand against, if you turn to the enlargement of your own capacities, just that itself creates new potential.” Vandana Shiva.

On the 21st January 2017, around 1 million women will be sharing their Stri Shakti – woman power and strength – around the world, inspired by Women’s March Washington. Initially organised as a response to the presidential inauguration of Donald Trump, the idea has spiralled in to a passionate stance for all human rights and funadamental freedoms, for what we have achieved so far and what yet has to be done and to counter all forms of discrimination, inequality and divisive politics.

“We are far more united and have far more in common with each other than things that divide us.” Jo Cox

Personally, 2017 is not a year for me to remain silent. With Trump’s inauguration today and the looming doom of Brexit, I will be marching in London, exhilarated by striding alongside fellow women and men who believe that change for the better is possible. It is.

Last year was BIG, politically and personally. After the Brexit vote and the tsunami of anti-immigration rhetoric I felt I was dragged back to a 1970’s/80’s discourse about race, immigration and far right activity. Internally kicking and screaming, for the first time in years as I turned up at work in a Brexit stronghold, I acutely felt the colour of my skin, the way I did as a kid in 1970’s Sheffield. I realised that for quite a few years I was ‘just me’ and people had stopped asking me ‘do you eat with your fingers’ (no, I use my toes) and ‘do you have to have an arranged marriage?’ (check my roots, I’m practically fossilised in the world of arranged marriages). Fortunately, I worked with an open and politically aware bunch of colleagues who were keen to discuss the vote and it’s impact.

Yet, there I was again, 6 years old and walking down Glossop Road with my sister, being told ‘go home Paki’ by 2 skinheads. I turned around and shouted back ‘I am home’ whilst my sister told me to shut up worried we would be attacked. Small girl. Big gob. Enlarging capacities to stand up for myself.

11 years old and having a football kicked deliberately at my head and then kicked in the back, ‘go home’. I told Dad. Dad told me to tell them – ‘I was born here, this is my home. I’m here because you were there’. So I did. They didn’t understand it but they left me alone. Small girl. Big Gob.

14 years old, 1984, Margaret Thatcher’s ranting about immigration (again) and after being repeatedly verbally abused by the prettiest girl in school with big boobs I packed my Cadbury pencil tin with pens, put it in a carrier bag and the next time she ‘took the piss’ I swung it at her head. She never bothered me again. Neither did anyone else. But it was me who ended up in the Headmaster’s office. Me who was the problem. Small girl. Big Gob.

“That amazing power of being able to stand with total courage in the face of total power and not be afraid. That is Stri Shakti.”Vanadana Sharma

Teenage me was bursting with anger, confusion and frustration. I channelled this by becoming vegetarian, exploring animal rights, anti-racism, graffiti’ing the entire cubicle wall of one of the girls’ toilets at school, increasing my truanting and marching at Greenham Common and Molesworth against nuclear weapons, shaking fences and helping to bounce a police car. Mum and Dad thought I was on school trips during these demonstrations. I had a lucky escape once when my sister spotted me in a news clip on the evening news, marching obliviously at Greenham Common across the TV screen.

“If we were to lose the ability to be emotional, if we were to lose the ability to be angry, to be outraged, we would be robots. And I refuse that. ” Arundhati Roy

Around this same time riots were exploding across the country and unbeknownst to me in the industrial North, a small group of women were doing their little bit to fight extremism in London:

“Then there was the legendary Sari Squad. These were women, mainly of South Asian origin, who were experts in various martial arts and ready and willing to take on any racists who would try and spoil our fun. They founght with style, and would usually burst in to song after seeing off any attackers.”Benjamin Zephaniah.

As Zephaniah describes them they seem like a bunch of super-shero Asian woman swooping in to defend humanity. In my imagination, I see The Sari Squad with rolling pins and chapatti pans, taking off their rubber flip flops to fight off the thugs. They were political, defiant and inclusive. I wish I could’ve been there, been part of their squad. Collaborative sisters for justice. I wonder where they are now? (above is the only image I could find of the Sari Squad on the google)

By cosmic flukery I was born female. I was Mum and Dad’s great fourth hope and expectations were high. The youngest sibling of 2 sisters and 1 brother. Instead of popping out with a penis I popped out with a vagina. Sorry Mum and Dad but I reckon on an intergalactic level you chose this and so did I. Us Indians, we love males. So much so that there are too many of them now in India and there are not enough wives. Hope you are learning your lesson – the world needs women.

Expectations for us daughters were low growing up, both within the family and within school. But for reasons that became apparent to me later, we weren’t forced in to the kitchen to cook or do the housework. Instead we followed hobbies, from soul music to writing to sewing (as long as they were home based hobbies!). We all became quietly rebellious in our own ways. At school my eldest sister was encouraged to become a secretary. She went on to gain degrees in politics and social work. My middle sister was told she wasn’t clever enough to do O-levels. She went on to complete nurse training, a degree and ran A & E departments. I was told by the school careers officer that I could not become a writer and by the teacher that I could not stay at school to do A -levels. Well, you all know where I am now! And no, none of us had arranged marriages.

“The most common way people give up ther power is by thinking they don’t have any.” Alice Walker

We were enlarging capacities, creating new potential. New potentialities = a powerful weapons of mass construction.

You see, the personal is political. The political is personal. My life has been defined by race, gender, cultural patriarchy and god knows what else. I cannot escape either in the eyes of the bigger world out there and the 1970’s/1980’s rhetoric I grew up in that tried to diminish my power. Yet, I am thankful for each and everyone of these experiences. They made me strong, the made me rebel. They made me in to a woman with a Big Gob. They taught me compassion and to fight for the underdog. They made me resilient and able to stand on my own two feet. I absolutely love men but I don’t need one to support me. I am the sum of the cultural, historical, political, social, ecomonimc his-tory but I’ve made it my her-story. I love being who I am with the ever evolving identity I have. All of this has given me the courage to live just a little bit bigger everyday. Small woman. Big Gob. Doing my little bit. Doing people’s heads in regularly. Ha!

So tomorrow I am marching for all the wayfinders who came before me. For my mother, my grandmothers and ancestors who paved the way for me to enjoy the extraordinary freedoms I am priveledged enough to experience. And for all the women (and men) who are still fighting for their fundamental rights and freedoms across this world. I am an idealist but a realist. And that realism often overwhelms me. So I’ll concentrate on doing my little bit for now with no expectations for where it may lead. Maybe it’s time for The Sari Squad to make a comeback?

“I function like a free being. I think getting that freedom is a social duty becasue I think we owe it to each other without prescriptions and demands. I think what we owe each other is a celebration of life and to replace fear and hopelessness with fearlessness and joy.”Vandana Sharma

]]>http://dalkular.com/the-sari-squad-stri-shakti-and-enlarging-capacities/feed/05827The Physicality of Losshttp://dalkular.com/the-physicality-of-loss/
http://dalkular.com/the-physicality-of-loss/#commentsFri, 13 Jan 2017 17:21:54 +0000http://dalkular.com/?p=5807“Grief is like a long valley, a winding valley where any bend may reveal a totally new landscape.” C.S. Lewis The start of 2017 has been full of unexpected brave and beautiful conversations with sister-friends near and afar, many of whom have recently lost loved ones. I feel blessed to be able to share with […]

“Grief is like a long valley, a winding valley where any bend may reveal a totally new landscape.”

C.S. Lewis

The start of 2017 has been full of unexpected brave and beautiful conversations with sister-friends near and afar, many of whom have recently lost loved ones. I feel blessed to be able to share with them openly about their grief and loss and mine. The conversations have been full of love, pain, sadness and hope. Inspiring. Up-lifting. Life affirming. Making us feel connected and less alone, demystifying the whole ‘how to grieve’ crap. There is no ‘way’ to grieve. This is precisely why we need to talk about loss and grief more – to make us feel less weird or abnormal. I don’t have the answers, I only know what losing my Dad has been like for me and it’s helped me to share it and I know it has helped others to read about it. These conversations are so enlivening.

This post has been sitting patiently in the draft section waiting for me to hit publish. Part of me thinking ‘not another grief post Dal’. See, I get caught up in it all too. So, after one of those precious conversations today I had a good old cry to some of my favourite ‘I miss you Dad’ (imagine me wailing with snot down my face) songs followed by some MJ, bad dancing and a walk in the woods. On the way back past my little local bookshop I noticed a book ‘Yoga for Grief and Loss’ in the window and there was my ‘hit it’ sign. Grieving is a profoundly physical process.

Now that my 4 month soulbattical has come to an end, 4 months of not doing the day job has been utterly revitalising. 4 months of catching up with myself and recovering from being a carer to my Dad to losing him has been a precious gift. 4 months of getting back on track with my fragmented social life. It was hard to give myself this gift – live off my savings because what if……??? Fill in the gaps. What if an asteroid falls out of the sky hitting my house and it’s not covered by the insurance policy? What if I decide that I really do want to be Wonder Woman and need breast implants and hair extensions? What if no-one ever employs me again? I will have to live in a cardboard box in the underpass (the one near Waitrose please).

Until I stopped last September, I didn’t truly appreciate the profound level of exhaustion every part of me was feeling. Grieving takes a MASSIVE amount of physical energy. Few people talk about the physical effects of grief but they are there. And if we don’t know about them we struggle to extend empathy to those grieving folks who are struggling with ongoing ailments. It’s simply not their fault.

In my case, weird symptoms appeared and lingered. For months my rib cage ached and creaked feeling like it was going to crack under some internal pressure. My heart felt like it was so swollen that it would have to push out between each rib and beat there in a big splodge. Random pains moved around my ribs, my abdomen, my back and sides. My kidneys throbbed. My heart rate was scattered. I felt as if I had a huge mass of stuck energy swirling from my chest to my pelvis. It wasn’t just down to the physical exertion of sobbing. This was a profound ache.

I was constantly tired and slept for hours and hours. Numerous scans and blood tests came back clear. My GP looked at me kindly and said “you’ve been through a major life event…” Yes, I agreed. No other notable cause other than losing someone I loved dearly.

Yet it felt so physically different from my usual experience of a stress related illness. Maybe my body had pre-programmed physical responses to stress – headaches, eczema, rosacea. But this was something else – my body hadn’t experienced a loss on this level. A broken heart? Maybe my ribcage had to grow and stretch to allow my heart to expand in to the maelstrom of emotions it was experiencing, struggling to protect it at all costs.

Two weeks of sea swimming, sun, tears and journalling in Crete eased the creaks and pains but still they lingered. Finally I sought the ear of a counsellor and after one especially emotional session I awoke the following morning completely creak-free. The mass of energy had disappeared. My heart had let go and resumed it’s place, no longer needing to spill out of my ribs. Moments like this are sometimes described as the hardwork miracle – you do the emotional work and one day everything clicks in to place. Grieving is hard work in every way.

Feel it. The thing that you don’t want to feel. Feel it. And be free.

(Nayirrah Waheed)

I still feel the physical impact of grief on my body like an invisible scar that is slowly healing. When my soulbattical began I knew I had to take very good care of myself, needing the open stretch of time to resume my healthy ways and to recover lost parts of myself. Over the 4 months I returned to daily’ish forest walks (interrupted for a month by a weird ligament injury in my ankle that ‘just appeared’ out of nowhere after dancing to MJ’s Don’t Stop Till You Get Enough – maybe another grief response?), joined a slimming group (I am metaphorically dying as I confess this) losing almost a stone in weight, and restored my regular Iyengar Yoga practice, focusing on stretching the capacity of my ribs. Little by little I am getting stronger, regaining physical vitality – a work in progress.

This sister is danced again…most notably on NYE for 3 and a half hours.

I’m writing this for the special sisters out there who have experienced great losses recently. Please be gentle with yourself in every way. Give yourself time and space in whatever way you can and do not worry about those around you who don’t understand – they can’t and that is ok. No-one will tell you how much energy it takes to grieve and when you experience the full heft of grief it might feel easier to bundle it away or to try and get through it quickly.

You think the pain will break you – let it try. Let it try and thoroughly break you in every way. You will see that it won’t. Your grief is precious. Breathtakingly beautiful in as many ways as it is unbearable. Tears let loose are droplets of gratitude for the love we experienced and still feel. Grief is alchemical fuel and no text book will tell you that. It cracks your heart open immeasurably and is an agent of transformation, revealing hidden treasures. You got this sisters. xo

]]>http://dalkular.com/the-physicality-of-loss/feed/125807Found Sister(s)http://dalkular.com/found-sister/
http://dalkular.com/found-sister/#commentsFri, 02 Dec 2016 11:58:39 +0000http://dalkular.com/?p=5791 “Be what you are, of the earth, but a dreamer too.” Mary Oliver 2016 has been a tumultuous year. Tum-ult-uous. Just saying that word, feeling my tongue rock and roll around those syllables, fills my soul with a weird kind of acknowledgment. 2016 has felt 2 years long. And I remind myself that there are […]

“Be what you are, of the earth, but a dreamer too.”

Mary Oliver

2016 has been a tumultuous year. Tum-ult-uous. Just saying that word, feeling my tongue rock and roll around those syllables, fills my soul with a weird kind of acknowledgment. 2016 has felt 2 years long. And I remind myself that there are still 29 days to go. I reckon this year is what it feels like to have been struck by lightening.

This was the year of the Found Sister. I welcome December in to my heart as a big sigh, the end of a long-hard-hill-climb type of year. Personally – politically – personally. It’s a complicated coil of belonging to myself, each other, this world. Yet my breath hardly comes back. I still hold it sometimes.

Death often leads to aftershocks and you never quite know when they are going to come. Or where from. Sometimes that tectonic settling is a dislocated shoulder being put back in to place, painful but very necessary. At other times the plates have settled in a new position and that’s where they’re going to stay, painful with a new horizon to navigate.

I’ve felt like a magazine that has been ripped apart, sometimes harshly, sometimes with love – like one of my cut-ups, starting off as a jumbled heap of feelings, emotions, explosions, difficult words. Month by month, the little slips and scraps of paper have been pulled out, beautiful questions, poignant callings, feral blessings, awkward truths.

I’ve been blessed by the presence of earthly angels who’ve arrived in my life at the perfect moment to help me re-mix and find a new poem. Earthly angels who’ve picked me up from the rubble of old words. It is truth to say help comes from where we least expect it. I have learned to accept that help and support will not always come from where I most expect it. That’s ok. But it does come. And sometimes it can help re-shape you in ways you never thought possible.

“They were dreamers, and imaginers, and declarers; they lived looking and looking and looking, seeing the apparent and beyond the apparent, wondering, allowing for uncertainty, also grace, easygoing here, ferociously unlovable there; they were thoughtful.”

Mary Oliver

I am a new poem. A Found Sister. A historical mash-up, reclaiming hidden worlds and buried words, mixing them in to a new alchemical cocktail complete with an umbrella and over-excited sparkler. I’ll have a cherry too, thank you. I have found new sisters too, a tribe of wholehearted, strengthy women who lift my soul so high I truly believe I could jump from cloud to cloud. Women need women who support women.

To honour this threshold year, December 2016 is going to be a time of looking back – keeping a December travelogue, going through the journals I kept after Dad’s departure, through the moments (the good, the bad, the traumatic), through the online world I flirt in which sometimes feels ethereal, impossible to catch in my hands but where a kind heart passionately throbs. There are many open-ended and ragged edges that need further attention, that jab in my dreams, my waking days, behind my eyes. There is stuff that I want to leave behind in 2016 and stuff that I’ll take forward as my talisman for 2017.

It helps having a sprained ankle to slow me down this month. I thank Michael Jackson’s “Don’t stop till you get enough” and my (new)Found Sisters for this grounding-ness and all the goodness December wants to share with me.

Dedicated to all my Found Sisters wherever you are in the world.

(I’ll be diving in to #DecemberReflections2016 with Susannah Conway, always a thought provoking, joyful and heartwarming community)

]]>http://dalkular.com/found-sister/feed/125791Found Poetry – unpredictable spontaneityhttp://dalkular.com/found-poetry-unpredictable-spontaneity/
http://dalkular.com/found-poetry-unpredictable-spontaneity/#commentsMon, 21 Nov 2016 00:40:28 +0000http://dalkular.com/?p=5766“You cannot will spontaneity. But you can introduce the unpredictable spontaneous factor with a pair of scissors.” W.S Burroughs – writer|artist And a handful of pens. I’ve decided there are distinct benefits to being bunged up with a raging cold. As my body and mind were too exhausted to do much this weekend, on Friday […]

“You cannot will spontaneity. But you can introduce the unpredictable spontaneous factor with a pair of scissors.”

W.S Burroughs – writer|artist

And a handful of pens. I’ve decided there are distinct benefits to being bunged up with a raging cold. As my body and mind were too exhausted to do much this weekend, on Friday night I started snipping away at a 2015 copy of Bella Grace that I’d never got round to reading last year. I thought I’d give a visionboardythingy a go but the truth is – I’M JUST NOT IN TO THEM, never have been. They tend to fall behind cupboards and I forget they’re there. Best place for them.

As for Bella Grace, I was gifted a subscription last year. Though the magazine is utterly gorgeous, I struggled to relate to that level of gorgeousness (what,no graffiti?) even though it celebrates life’s little complicated moments too. I’m just not the ‘flowery dress girl holding a pile of books in a field’ type of girl. Right now I’m sat in my M & S underpants, a fleece and flip flops at my tiny desk. The central heating is on full blast. I’m that kind of girl – pants and flip flops. In a centrally heated terraced house in the middle of an ex-industrial northern town.

I digress. It was pure unadulterated pleasure trashing Bella Grace. Cutting. Snipping. Blowing my nose. Ripping. Mindlessly. Thorough inspiration. I confess to reading some of it too and enjoying it. The typesets, the images, the words are stunning. Before I knew it I had a pile of words and sentences waiting to be formed in to something surprising:

This is the cut-up form of Found Poetry. Weirdly, the poem seemed to find me and felt deeply personal and soothing, maybe relating to the loss of my father and the time-out that I’m having now to catch up with my good s-elf. There was no conscious intention in the creation of this theme for the poem, I just played around with the cut-up words until I found a sequence I liked. Then I thought ‘ooooohhhh’. Hmmm.

More poems found me speaking of faith, strength and loss. Erasure and cut-up together:

I loved the free form almost daydream-like quality of creating these poems and the fact that it felt at the time, that their creation required very little thinking or concentration. Tapping in to the ‘unconscious intelligence’ as David Bowie, who used cut-ups to create song lyrics described it. He goes on to say it is like playing with words, a kind of ‘western tarot‘ revealing ‘disassociated ideas‘ and ‘awkward relationships‘ and I would say awkward truths too.

William Burroughs describes it as introducing ‘...the unpredictable spontaneous factor with a pair of scissors’.

I was ready for unpredictable spontaneity.

Given my snot-infused state, I decided to have a creative weekend, handing myself fully over to cut-ups and a bit of erasure too. I needed not to think – just be. And to be able to blow my nose as often as needed.

As the weekend progressed, I became conscious of a theme unfolding through the cut-up poems that were being formed. It’s been 9 months since my Dad passed away and the last few months have been a struggle. Out of respect I can’t go in to detail here, but let’s just say awkward truths have made for a complicated grieving process meaning I’ve found it hard to connect with my Dad lately. Journalling has been practically non-existent.

Last Wednesday I received a photograph of Dad’s ashes finally being scattered in the sacred River Sutlej in Punjab, nestled amidst stunning mountains. In the photograph, his ashes seemed to be flying in at speed, taking a last leap in to the river below.

Clearly, my unconscious mind was processing a lot of STUFF through the random words and finding a way to communicate with me. The found poems started revealing hidden messages imbued with layers of meaning. It felt like a mystical process. I could feel outer layers of STUFF loosening and a softening that surprised me.

On Sunday I created this poem:

As I was creating the found poem, I felt a weird surge of energy, a tingling. I felt the presence of my Dad. After many months. This may sound weird but in that moment it felt like Dad had found a way to communicate with me through cut up words. My fingers were being pulled to particular words and sentences. I could feel his laugh, smell his joy and hear his soul.

Reading back through the previous poems, I began to see the thread, the connections, the communication.

Is it real? I don’t know. I don’t care. It is ENOUGH. To touch the soul again of a dearly departed one through a ripped up magazine.

On Friday night, I’d been struck by a quote in Bella Grace by Bernard L. Lifshutz;

“When we are old, our lives become the sum of all who we have loved. It is important not to waste anyone.”

In a rare journal entry I wrote that night:

I have a lot to express in myself that is just not coming out. I can’t journal. I feel stuck about Dad…maybe the masters has sucked up my words, I am bunged up with a cold. I want easy, I want play. There is something very comforting about glue sticks, scissors and paper and not thinking. Of allowing thoughts to wander and jump and wonder. Beautiful typefaces help.

The quote made me think of Dad and of those who are still living. Was I wasting Dad? Was I wasting people I loved? I had to confess – I probably am. Maybe it was this quote that lubricated the way for unconscious creations this weekend, influencing the deep flow that emerged. Words I very much needed to hear to shake me awake. I agreed with Bowie, using cut-up helps you get out of your own way, out of your rational and conscious mind that might repeat the same old story, and in to a possible profounder truth and new story.

I’d found a safe way to express myself through Found Poetry and Dad had found a vehicle to speak to me “don’t waste me, spreading kindness, love no matter what.”

(A big thank you to all the wonderful wordsmiths and artists from a 2015 Bella Grace magazine. Alas, as I went in to a cutting frenzy I didn’t make any notes of creators. If you happen across this post and in any way unhappy please message me here.)

]]>http://dalkular.com/found-poetry-unpredictable-spontaneity/feed/65766Lost and Found in Crete: Part Two – The lost art of getting lost.http://dalkular.com/lost-and-found-in-crete-part-two-the-lost-art-of-getting-lost/
http://dalkular.com/lost-and-found-in-crete-part-two-the-lost-art-of-getting-lost/#commentsTue, 15 Nov 2016 16:47:31 +0000http://dalkular.com/?p=5750I’m still here and “…still feeling safely tucked under the ancient olive tree that resides high above Loutro bay in Crete. Stretched out against it’s cracked skin, gazing out over the Libyan sea, I’m drifting off behind the distant mountains with the sun.” As began the last blog post, weeks ago. Time stretches easily in […]

I’m still here and “…still feeling safely tucked under the ancient olive tree that resides high above Loutro bay in Crete. Stretched out against it’s cracked skin, gazing out over the Libyan sea, I’m drifting off behind the distant mountains with the sun.” As began the last blog post, weeks ago.

Time stretches easily in to tomorrow, next week, next month. Winter knocks gently at the door for a day or two before balmy warmth rocks up again so I never quite know what to wear outside. Always over-dressed or under-dressed. I can hardly remember the days that go before today when friends or acquaintances ask me to list what I’ve been up to…errrrr…can’t really remember. They’ve been good but they’re melting in to a soft ball of slowing down, sleeping, re-connecting and looking in to the mirror and saying ‘hello Dal, there you are!” Yes, here I am. Still.

The Crete trip was profound and it’s soul seems to have leapt in to my bones and settled there. Earlier this year I’d found a writing retreat online in Loutro, Southern Crete, where Loutro was described as a soporific place, breathtakingly quiet, full of history and a haven for writers. Only accessible by foot or boat. Those words stuck in the forefront of my memory as I read more about Loutro in Lonely Planet, Rough Guides and online. They all said the same – sleepy, soporific, going back in time. That is exactly where I needed to be. I would create my own Loutro retreat experience.

So, one spontaneously booked flight and frantic online room searching later, I arrived on Crete. After a sleepless night in a friendly little hotel in Chania with a very handsome receptionist called Stavros (honestly), a wibbly-wobbly coach journey sat next to a Cretan woman repeatedly signing crosses on her chest, I boarded the small ferry from Chora Sfakia which took me to Loutro bay. Along with what seemed like hundreds of other tourists. I arrived in a knackered heap, with aching ribs and some kind of lingering virus.

Loutro is absolutely lovely in many ways. There is not much to do there except eat, drink, sleep, walk, swim and BE. It is paradisaical. It is gorgeous. I can see how it would be a writer’s haven. BUT with hundreds of other tourists. You’ll get away from it all with everyone else getting away from it all. Hmmmm. Good people watching then.

The best thing about thinking ‘hmmmm’ was getting lost. After a couple of days of sea gazing from the balcony, catching up on sleep and tears and being blessed by Julia, the studio caretaker, “I bless you not once, not twice, but three times with all the love in the world” followed by a hug and a kiss, I went walkabout with the firm intention of finally getting away from it all.

The Sfakian coastline overlooking the Libyan Sea is SPECTACULAR. The water is like pure crushed crystals. The mountains arid and wise, scattered with thousands of sea squills that light up every night at dusk. Mountain goats are everywhere, the bells a constant melodic tinkle being flung up to the sky and in to weary ears. Eagles and vultures fly high above deserted mountain villages. There are no cars. Just the odd hum of a boat engine. I found it so stunning that tears regularly filled my eyes.

I got thoroughly lost. Well as lost as is possible on a coastline. And found a little slice of heaven created by a hippy called Vangelis who ran the most basic of guest houses, nestling all by itself on a truly soporific stretch of coast. Complete with hammocks, swinging chairs, stone people and eclectic guests including a man from Paris who had spent the previous month sleeping under a two thousand year old olive tree. Utter heaven. It was QUIET. No pandering to tourists. Vangelis had inherited this little house from his grandfather and he and his wife had left Athens to live there. Just being in his presence felt calming and magical. I remember his big slanting kind eyes and his effortless slowness. The soft sea was medicinal balm for my weary soul. The Milky Way felt like it was going to fall from the sky and wrap me up in stardust. I was utterly BLOWN AWAY.

Writing this here and now feels difficult, to put in to words exactly what this whole trip felt like. What it meant. Feelings. It was more about feelings, presence, connection, healings. Less about words. Though words seeped through the pen to paper.

I wrote this pantoum, a hypnotic and repetitive form, hugely pleasing to write:

I rest against a creased olive tree amidst labyrinthine ruins the Sfakian sun begins his descent and suddenly, my eyes are on fire by a thousand sea squills.

Amidst labyrinthine ruins soaking up vanishing daystar rays and suddenly, my eyes are on fire by a thousand sea squills I wonder, do they dance like this at sunrise too?

Soaking up vanishing daystar rays twilight deepens, sea squills fall in to sleep I wonder, do they dance like this at sunrise too? Heartbeat slows, saltwater runs across my cheeks.

Getting lost and finding my little Cretan paradise helped me to re-connect to many parts of me that had split off in the preceding 18 months. I’d forgotten how to get lost. I started having conversations with random strangers and making contacts, connections and links, broadening my horizons and viewpoints. I revelled in daily sea swimming and felt as if I was being washed from the inside out. I spent hours gazing at the setting sun under ancient olive trees. I got lost yet again in Chania, finding myself in the ancient synagogue on Jewish New Year, being fed and watered and invited back to teach some creative writing. All these experiences reminded me just how narrow and tired my life had become as a result of trauma and loss.

It taught me that getting lost is so vitally important to living. Actually having no destination at all is completely freeing. Who knows where you’ll end up.

When we were little, my sisters’ and I always used to shout ‘get lost!’ when we annoyed each other. ‘Go away, get lost and don’t come back’ is what we really meant. Returning to Motherland 2 – Crete was about going away, getting lost and frankly I didn’t want to come back! Yet I did. It feels like a subtly different me that came back. A me that has re-kindled some old dreams of spending more time amidst the goats and sea squills, of swimming in turquoise infused wetness and befriending old old trees. Of getting lost more often nearer to home too.

Not everyone is comfortable when you leave the safe shores of certainty to go lose yourself. It is deeply unsettling to them. They’ll try to pull you back to shore. To the safe job. To the same old routine. But if you need to do it, to cut the ropes and see where you’ll float off to – then do it. Bite that rope with your teeth if you have to. Fuck the destination, it doesn’t matter. Destinations can be overrated anyway. Especially if everyone is going there. Stop reading guide books. Revel in the unknowingness of it all and speak to improbable people. It’s not about being reckless. It’s about being wise. It’s about fuelling your soul, your spirit.

Now it’s time for me to get lost again.

And to all of you beautiful beings that feel like my online sea squills, ‘get lost!’.

]]>http://dalkular.com/lost-and-found-in-crete-part-two-the-lost-art-of-getting-lost/feed/85750Lost and found in Crete ~ Part One: Homecominghttp://dalkular.com/lost-and-found-in-crete-part-one/
http://dalkular.com/lost-and-found-in-crete-part-one/#commentsTue, 18 Oct 2016 15:46:18 +0000http://dalkular.com/?p=5701I WENT I showed no restraint.I gave in completely and went. To the delights, that were half real, half wheeling in my mind, I went in the luminous night. And I drank of the heady wines, just as sensuality’s stalwarts drink. C.P. Cavity (translated by David Connolly) These days, I’m still feeling safely tucked under the ancient […]

These days, I’m still feeling safely tucked under the ancient olive tree that resides high above Loutro bay in Crete. Stretched out against it’s cracked skin, gazing out over the Libyan sea, I’m drifting off behind the distant mountains with the sun.

In reality, I’m sat here at my kitchen table in Yorkshire, back on morning caffeine kicks (oh how I love this ritual) but somehow it feels I left a big part of me over there…happily so.

Or could it be I was always there and just needed to go back and meet myself again?

“Crete’s mystery is extremely deep. Whoever sets foot on this island senses a mysterious force branching warmly and beneficently through his veins, senses his soul begin to grow.” Niko Kazantzakis

Crete’s mystery first oozed into my veins in September 2002. Battered and weary from an abruptly ruptured relationship, I found myself doing Ashtanga yoga and line dancing at a small retreat in Agios Pavlos. As the taxi wound down in to the little village, I was utterly entranced by the arid mountains and little houses dotted around. I was the most immobile human amongst the wind-breaking, steaming yogis despite the muscle-melting heat. But surprisingly good at line dancing.

Much time was spent losing myself in sea-blue skies, shining water and being hypnotised by tinkling goat bells. This momentary pause provided respite from the real-life entanglement I found myself in. And stoked my curiosity for this magical island…
Fast forward 6 years or so and I’d discovered Iyengar yoga, a practice where battered bodies and un-stretched limbs were welcome – using blocks, props and multifarious sound effects to ease out knots and pains. And I discovered Marios Argiros, a lean, olive skinned and incredible yogi who ran Iyengar retreats in Kissamos Bay near Chania. It was enough to just visit a place called Kissamos. Kiss-a-moss. The name rolled around my tongue like a Cretan honey wrapped cloud. And so did the place for the next 4 years as my sister and I stretched and walked and swam in paradise for a week before returning home floating on raki, clouds and wearing sun-kissed skin.

But it was more than that. Year by year the soul of Crete was nestling itself surreptitiously in to a part of my psyche so that every time I left I would be longing to return. Some places just do that to you. I felt a love and safety amongst the Cretan people I met, who still beheld the spirit of filoxenia towards their visitors.

Filoxenia (philoxenia) ~ a generosity of spirit that welcomes and takes care of strangers in one’s home. One local described it as welcoming visitors to their island as ‘mini gods’. The English translation doesn’t do filoxenia justice. It’s something you have to experience and feel – and mostly, it feels very real in Crete. Like a big cup of cocoa and and a hot water bottle warming your bones and radiating outwards.

My longing continued and grew in to fantasies of spending whole summers in Crete. Yet slowly, as time passed the fantasies and longing got buried beneath other countries that called me. Morocco, Cuba, America and Australia, almost tempting me to languish there for months or even years. As life hurtled on, another relationship ended and so did my father’s life. It seems if you don’t act on a impulse or intuition fast enough it will quietly say ‘stuff you then’ and go hide. Until.

Death is an awakening force that pierces directly in to the truth of who, where, why and what-the-f**k. If we allow it to. Crete started murmuring ~ come…come back and the gentle sing-song of goat bells haunted my ears by night once again. Crete remained alive in my veins, waking me up. I needed the sea to infect every part of me and the mountains to bring me home. I needed bursting nectarines and blistering heat. I needed to hear the perfumed lullaby of a middle-aged bearded Greek man with sea-creased, jade-soaked eyes and rough hands to bring me salads with far too many tomatoes for one. I needed feta with everything. And for raki to heat my throat and burn my words. I needed sweaty walks up steep hills to mountain villages and to scratch the little lumps tattooed on my arms by the generosity of Cretan mosquitos. Alive. I wanted thorough aliveness. I wanted to reach up and grab the Milky Way and wrap it around me, a blanket of warm remembering of my deepest ancestors. And to fly with vultures and eagles again. I needed to sit under 2 thousand year old olive trees enveloped by their wisdom and fearlessness. This drenching, this absolute drenching that Crete gives and gives and gives. I needed to thoroughly, completely and utterly soak myself and lose myself in this.

And what alchemy happens when you listen to that whisper…

It began 30,000 feet in the air ~ out of the blue, amidst the blue. I began to write about how I couldn’t write about what happened in the 11 months between Dad having his stroke and Dad dying. About how I just couldn’t write about any of it at the time. But ‘that time’ felt lodged firmly in my body and pushing out of my ribs, ever increasing in size. Especially those first 10 days in the Punjabi hospital which kept re-playing in my head, in my dreams, tainting everyday living moments.

from the journal, 30,000 feet high:

“I couldn’t write then. The hurt was so deep I couldn’t access where it was located. The shock so visceral that it took up permanent residence in my cells and started to push words through my pores so finally my face spoke the pain that languished like an unwelcome house guest, the poltergeist within, throwing and moving things about in the only direction it could – skin.

Internally, I was exploding at atomic velocity, composure decomposing, deconstructing. I felt the very threads keeping me strung together withering daily along with Dad’s achingly slow demise. And whilst inside molten rock was surging, the gurgling heat was sluggishly fading. I was slowing too. Myelin sheath rubbed raw by a covert grief leaking all over me like a sullen pen spelling it’s ink all over my fingers and blotting the page with it’s petulance, refusing to allow for clarity of words.”

“The star holds the sky. We share the same lineage the same familiarity. Dad too. Maybe that’s what needed to happen. That part of me that couldn’t BE with what was happening in THAT 11 months needed to fly back to familiar territories along light years, to be safely kept until the moment came when I could again unfold.”

By the time the plane thumped on to Chania runway something had shifted. Writing about not being able to write – it works. Mid-air I’d re-united with part of myself again.

I think of Cavafy’s Ithaca and pray that my journey ahead is long and infused with treasures…

]]>http://dalkular.com/lost-and-found-in-crete-part-one/feed/65701Gritstone to Loutro and the middlings…http://dalkular.com/gritstone-to-loutro-and-the-middlings/
http://dalkular.com/gritstone-to-loutro-and-the-middlings/#commentsMon, 26 Sep 2016 03:57:31 +0000http://dalkular.com/?p=5680 Since the last blog post I can report that simmer time is officially here. But how hard is to go from a fast boil to just a little sizzle? Hard. My first two weeks of simmering allowed for long forgotten walks in the Peak District. That tenacious landscape thrilled […]

Since the last blog post I can report that simmer time is officially here. But how hard is to go from a fast boil to just a little sizzle?

Hard. My first two weeks of simmering allowed for long forgotten walks in the Peak District. That tenacious landscape thrilled and ignited my cells to come out of hiding, infusing themselves with heather-laden air. A re-grounding and re-wilding of internal affairs, catching the last blast of purple ling. Remembering the ‘oh this is me’ me. Simultaneously, the anticipation of walking a new edge was building with my masters course due to begin, knocking at my heart like Autumn hues. Step after step after step.

It was feet atop flagstones and gritstone. My hand barely held a pen unless it had to.

Endings. Middlings. Beginnings. Middlings. In that order. Loss is a big middling. And on the 7 month anniversary of Dad’s grand departure I arrived in Bristol for the unknown unknown. A teenage dream finally realised. Bittersweet. ‘They’ say that grief gets easier. When? It’s not getting any easier. And I would like to politely add ‘f**k the cliches’. If I was previously inhabiting the ghostly space of liminal fug I’m not quite sure where I’m at right now. It feels like sticky cobwebs, a crippling slow ache, toffee fog and an unhealed scab. It feels like Dadly visitations in sleep time that keep me awake all night. It’s like ‘OK Dad, time to come home now, you’ve been in the Punjab long enough’.

I feel like an intergalactic traveller flying amidst a weird and wonderful nebula of loss, enchantment, wonder, hope, laughter, tears. Death sharpens like nothing else. It is a rude awakening and a rude unforgetting. A wild alivening. Some days I don’t feel big enough to hold all of these opposites. But they are not opposites. They’re just shades. Shades of being. The contradictions that we all juggle.

If Dad hadn’t passed away 7 months ago, I wouldn’t have been sat in a room with 7 other powerful word-warriors that day in Bristol. Nor would I have been invited in to a hot-tub later, an invitation I chose to decline (another story). Death sharpened me. Dad gifted me an edge that I never had before. I have no idea where it’ll lead. Thank you Dad. Then I think of gritstone and edges and middlings, of being a tiny being perched on Dad’s hip looking over the ‘pani’ (water) at Redmires..

The day after my body remembers it’s absolutely exhausted, I struggle to walk far and somehow a virus has snuck in to my ribs (says the osteopath). Or maybe my heart has got so overwhelmed by all of those juxtapositions that it’s pushing my ribs out. Getting a rib virus (a what?!!) is a strangeness I’d rather not repeat. Simmer Dal, simmer. If you won’t turn the heat down yourself then we’ll do it for you. But just one more thing to do…get on that airplane.

Here I am now. Sleepless in Loutro, fragments of dreams lurking, tea cooling, darkness lightening, ribs aching. Pinching myself that I’m actually here. Everything is S L O W in Loutro. Except me, for now. The only thing to do here is to embrace the simmering.

And as folks slowly waken to the day, the waning moon still hanging amidst altocumulus, the sky suffused with sunrise and a distant boat bringing in the dawn catch ~ I will go back to sleep and see where it takes me this morning.

]]>http://dalkular.com/gritstone-to-loutro-and-the-middlings/feed/155680Rumi, the boiling chickpea and the cookhttp://dalkular.com/rumi-the-boiling-chickpea-and-the-cook/
http://dalkular.com/rumi-the-boiling-chickpea-and-the-cook/#commentsFri, 26 Aug 2016 10:11:14 +0000http://dalkular.com/?p=5650 That’s what I feel like. A boiled chickpea, left to simmer for a bit and then boiled some more. Each boiling making me wiser, fiercely woken up, humbler. 18 months ago I didn’t realise that I needed the boiling that caring for a precious old soul would give me.This flavouring of intense loss and the […]

That’s what I feel like. A boiled chickpea, left to simmer for a bit and then boiled some more. Each boiling making me wiser, fiercely woken up, humbler. 18 months ago I didn’t realise that I needed the boiling that caring for a precious old soul would give me.This flavouring of intense loss and the spiced rice gifts of grief, living side by side with tamarind tears. Standing at the ragged edge of a new frontier, path ahead unknown, couldn’t – wouldn’t have happened without these boilings. As each of the days passed, I was acutely aware of my steaming transformation. Sometimes it was too damn hot. I burnt. But I couldn’t get out of the kitchen. The cook kept knocking me back in to the pot.

I’m still a fool and so like the chickpea to the cook I’ll say one day “Boil me some more. Hit me with the skimming spoon. I can’t do this by myself.” But first cook, please let me simmer awhile. Let the little sizzling bubbles bump against my smooth nutty body until we dance like Fred and Ginger in a jacuzzi overlooking the liminal horizon. Let me be slow cooked so I can sink into this space ahead of me and fully absorb the marination of time gone by and the new ingredients you will add to me.

RUMI (translated by Coleman Banks)

In the final days of finishing a contract, every part of me is ready for a much needed soulbattical (attempt number 3). I’m going slightly delirious at the thought of it. Like an out of control perseid shower shooting all over the place. My heart bursts with a HUGE thank you to the ever wonderful Rumi for THIS poem (intravenous poetic medication), to the boss who gave me a gift of a contract that allowed me the space to grieve whilst working and now the opportunity to slow down.

And to head cook Dad, a former chickpea who boiled before me, controlling it with prayer and practice. And finally alongside me, boiling together, preparing me and now encouraging my animal soul from Beyonderland. THANK YOU.

]]>http://dalkular.com/rumi-the-boiling-chickpea-and-the-cook/feed/356505 years ago…http://dalkular.com/5-years-ago/
http://dalkular.com/5-years-ago/#commentsThu, 18 Aug 2016 16:38:05 +0000http://dalkular.com/?p=5637I was pinning the poem ‘Fabric’ by the poet and artist, Tim Cumming, on to a board at City Lights bookshop in San Francisco trying to not look suspicious (why on earth I was sweating I don’t know – this was City Lights – poetry pinning allowed). I’d promised Tim on leaving the UK that I […]

I was pinning the poem ‘Fabric’ by the poet and artist, Tim Cumming, on to a board at City Lights bookshop in San Francisco trying to not look suspicious (why on earth I was sweating I don’t know – this was City Lights – poetry pinning allowed). I’d promised Tim on leaving the UK that I would cast his words across San Francisco and in to City Lights “A Literary Meeting place since 1953”, the melting pot for beatniks and anti-authoritarian voices in the 1950’s. Back in the day, if Tim had existed in this bit of time and space I’m sure he would have been here.

It was a MOMENT. I could hardly believe I was in THIS bookshop. This topped the other moment a few hours before, speaking Fabric out loud in to the winds atop the Golden Gate Bridge, repeating it like a mantra of mystical brown draylon and wishing for the spirit of the winds to take it around the world so others could breathe in the wonder.

Fabric birther earlier that same year ~ 2011, having been introduced by a mutual friend Jane, to Tim on a windy rooftop bar in Essaouria, Morocco ~ overlooking the Atlantic. At that moment in time, Jane was rescuing me from a fraught travel story (gratitude still abounds) and we were high on hair flinging, Gnawa singing. We ate chicken and drank wine, distant chants floating by and I started talking about my Dad, his brown draylon sofa and the thousands of prayers that had been said upon it by him as the sun rose every morning.

By the time I inherited the 25 year old sofa, the prayers and mantras Dad had uttered over the years had firmly woven themselves into it’s flowery material and the sofa had a palpable energy of it’s own. Insomniac friends used to have the best night’s sleep on the Sacred Sofa as it became known (or the Magic Sofa or Mystic Sofa…). I spent two weeks on it with swine flu and recovered completely. Moments of emotional turmoil were soothed by a few hours curled up on it, wrapped in a blanket, letting the brown draylon soak up tears and allowing evaporation in to the ethers to do the rest. The sofa had become a living legend. Dad laughed when I told him of it’s healing powers and not surprisingly, believed every word.

So did Tim and Jane. Weeks later, Fabric arrived in my inbox and this time I was whisked up in to a whirl of excitement and enchantment by the Sacred Sofa being so beautifully spun in to it’s own prayerful poem by Tim, and capturing a vivid moment of conviviality and connection. I read it over and over and over. It became my mantra of Summer 2011. To receive such a poem was a precious gift beyond words in a year that had rocketed in to unexpected flux, my internal earth shaking and my hair now falling out instead of being flung about. I felt deeply heard and listened to in the words of that poem. Folded in to my notebook, off it went on it’s transatlantic journey.

Last night I lit a rose incense stick, the same as Dad used to burn in the mornings, his favourite incense. I have just a few of these sticks left, using them sparingly for precious moments. I lit a little candle and placed it by a photo of Dad, lighting his smile up more than usual. It’s hard to be sad looking at his happy face. I received a text from my sister, she felt a brush on her arm this morning just before she was about to clean her teeth, ‘I think it was Dad’. I checked my emails and a blogger who I’d never met before had sent me a lovely note about how she’d read about my Dad and felt moved to write to me, sharing her story of loss and grief, and how things do get better over time. I sinked in to my grey sofa, a sofa also prayed upon and blessed by Dad. Six months to the hour that Dad had passed. 6 months that have flown by yet it still feels like yesterday that I held Dad’s hand.

5 years ago, when the tilt of my world shifted I had no idea what lay ahead. I’m glad I didn’t. But when I look back in to the eyes of the SHE that was ME I can see it now. Fire, determination, resilience, strength and a knowing. That one day I would be here, resting on a new threshold. On a newer sofa. Every moment of the last 5 years spun in to the fabric of now. Maybe Fabric is still flying with the winds, brushing the air with magic and touching souls.